Month: September 2018

NASA is targeting technosignatures in its renewed effort to detect alien civilizations. Congress asked NASA to re-boot its search for other civilizations a few months ago. Their first step towards that goal is the NASA Technosignatures Workshop, held in Houston from September 26th to 28th, 2018. If you’ve never stared out to space at night and

The human brain is a remarkable thing. It can do things our primate relatives are thousands – maybe even millions – of years of evolution away from, and our most complex machines are not even close to competing with our powers of higher consciousness and ingenuity. And yet, those 100 billion or so neurons are also incredibly fragile. If

A new study links rapid deoxygenation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to two powerful currents: the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current. The broad, biologically rich waterway in Eastern Canada which drains North America’s Great Lakes and is popular with fishing boats, whales, and tourists has lost oxygen faster than almost anywhere else in

Over the past few days, the mathematics world has been abuzz over the news that Sir Michael Atiyah, the famous Fields Medalist and Abel Prize winner, claims to have solved the Riemann hypothesis. If his proof turns out to be correct, this would be one of the most important mathematical achievements in many years. In

A magnitude 7.5 earthquake has struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, triggering a 1.8-metre (6-foot) tsunami. The wave tore through several of the island’s coastal cities and towns, including the capital Palu, on Friday. The devastating quake has been followed by multiple strong aftershocks, and comes shortly after a magnitude 6.1

A hacker gained access to nearly 50 million Facebook user accounts by exploiting a weakness in the social network’s systems, Facebook said on Friday. News of the cyber attack – which appears to be one of the most significant in Facebook’s history – sent shares of the company down roughly 3 percent in midday trading on Friday,

There’s been more scientific debate over the title of the world’s biggest bird than you might have realised, with many candidates coming and going down the years as new discoveries and new research has come to light. Now though, we may finally have a winner. Presenting Vorombe titan, a new species of flightless elephant bird

More than half of the world’s orcas are threatened by a group of toxic industrial chemicals that accumulate in their blubber and can be passed on from mother to calf. That’s according to a new study led by scientists in Denmark and published in the journal Science. Orca populations found in the most polluted seas

The Large Hadron Collider is at it again, showing us new wonders in the world of particle physics. Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration have observed two new particles that have never been seen before – and seen evidence of a third. The two new particles, predicted by the standard quark

We know, we know, there’s so much internet to read, and so little time. That’s why we’ve been rounding up the week’s most interesting science news for a quick catch-up, with a bonus quiz challenge to keep it entertaining. Answers are at the bottom of the page. Have fun! 1. A Renowned Mathematician Announced He

You’d probably think that a city with a feral cat population and a feral rat population would end up with fewer rats due to the work of… the feral cats. But it turns out that, just like humans, cats may prefer the path of least resistance – and that includes opting for easier prey. On

In the autumn of 1929, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her husband Charles flew across the Yucatán Peninsula. With Charles at the controls, Anne snapped photographs of the jungles just below. She wrote in her journal of Maya structures obscured by large humps of vegetation. A bright stone wall peeked through the leaves, “unspeakably alone and

Earlier this week, Japan’s space agency Jaxa made history by landing a pair of hopping rovers on an asteroid known as Ryugu, and sending back the first-ever images from the surface of a space rock. If that wasn’t awe-inspiring enough, Jaxa has just released not only more images, but even a small video from Ryugu’s

The plants of the Arctic, typically very low-lying shrubs, are getting taller as the region warms up because of climate change, new research has revealed. Existing plant species are growing in height and taller plants are moving into the neighbourhood too. How that affects the delicate ecosystems and carbon cycles of the Arctic is yet

Roughly 24,000 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, is a dead star that shouldn’t exist. Not, that is, according to current theory. The neutron star, accreting material from a much larger binary companion, is spewing out relativistic jets. The problem is that it also has a strong magnetic field. And relativistic jets

Psychologists call it the dark triad: an intersection of three of the most malevolent tendencies of human nature – psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. But the truth goes deeper, and darker. There’s also egoism, sadism, spitefulness, and more. And behind this rogues gallery of all our worst inclinations on the surface, a central, common core of

Clever and strange, octopuses are fascinating creatures with incredible problem-solving skills and breathtaking camouflage. But overall, they are short-lived, typically around for just one to two years. That’s because they’re semelparous, which means they reproduce just once before they die. With female octopuses, once she’s laid her eggs, that’s it. In fact, the mother even stops

A team of researchers in the UK have observed matter falling into a black hole at 30 percent the speed of light. This is much faster than anything previously observed. The high velocity is a result of misaligned discs of material rotating around the black hole. The galaxy in the study is named PG211+143 and

Being face to face with wild animals can be a source of great amazement. But there is such a thing as being too close to them, to the point where you become collateral between a carnivore and its flailing prey. This was the recent experience of adventurer Kyle Mulinder, who was kayaking with some friends

There are just a few hundred of them left in the wild – and now the population of critically endangered Sumatran tigers in the Indonesian jungle has suffered a blow after a magnificent animal was killed in a senseless accident. A hunter hoping to snare a wild pig on the island of Sumatra found not

A satellite orbiting Mars has taken a remarkable yet potentially somber photo of NASA’s longest-lived robot on the red planet. That robot is the Mars Opportunity rover, which is about the size of a golf cart, landed in January 2004, and was supposed to last 90 days. However, Opportunity has explored Mars for more than

We all know that Earth is old, but it’s hard to put into perspective just how old it is. After all, what does 4.5 billion years really mean? How do you even comprehend that amount of time with our short-lived human brains? Well, Business Insider has done a pretty incredible job of it in this

Humanity is producing so much data every single minute that we either need to slow down, or scientists need to crack the problem of finding better ways of storing that data ASAP. Now, new research has taken us one step closer to the ultimate in compact data storage: putting data on a single atom. As the basic

Across the world, the buzz of bee colonies is growing faint, and hives are failing. In what’s been described as “ecological armageddon”, this vital pollinator is vanishing. Scientists aren’t entirely sure why. Strong evidence exists linking the decline to pesticides, but new research shows another poison – one long believed to be harmless to animals

In 1954, archaeologist Samuel Lothrop described the horror show of an ancient burial site he’d excavated in Panama. Hacking, mutilation, sacrifice, people buried alive, cannibalism, flesh stripped from bones, decapitation for the purpose of trophy-taking – it was all there. Since then, the paper has been cited over 35 times as evidence of the culture’s

Centuries of human exploitation in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest – one of the world’s most important forests – has left it nearly empty, according to new research. More than half of the subtropical forest’s local mammal species have been wiped out since Europeans colonised the region in the 16th century, according to the study published in

Four years ago a viral campaign wooed the world with a promise of fighting climate change and jump-starting the economy by replacing tarmac on the world’s roads with solar panels. The bold idea has undergone some road testing since then. The first results from preliminary studies have recently come out, and they’re a bit underwhelming.

Scientists in Australia have solved a bizarre mystery from earlier in the month, when a mother in Queensland found that orange slices she’d cut up for her two-year-old son had puzzlingly transformed overnight. Hours after being segmented, these orange chunks were no longer orange, but had morphed into a vibrant purple. The fruit reportedly had

After a Hawaiian telescope spotted an object called ‘Oumuamua flying through space in October 2017, astronomers realised it was weird. Very weird. The object had a cigar-like shape and was 750 feet (228 metres) by 115 feet (35 metres) in size, or roughly as large as a skyscraper. It was dark red in colour and

Here in the Solar System, the search for extraterrestrial life is focused on microbes. But in recent years, projects such as Kepler and HARPS have done something incredible, exploding our awareness and knowledge of planets beyond the Solar System. To date, 3,779 planets have been confirmed from a variety of observatories, with thousands more candidates,

An ancient Egyptian text more than 1,300 years old, which would originally have been used as a magic spell, has finally been deciphered – and it seems like love was the goal. Today of course, many of us might just use a dating app instead. The spell or “magic recipe” includes an image showing two

Everybody knows the world’s got a serious carbon dioxide problem, but an ingenious and potentially cost-effective way of dealing with our surplus CO2 could provide the means of tomorrow’s battery technology. For years scientists have looked at ways of capturing carbon and storing it underground or even potentially in the ocean. But a new system

To startup founder and Stanford Medical graduate Jesse Karmazin, blood is the next big government-approved drug. Karmazin recently launched Ambrosia Medical – a startup that fills the veins of older people with fresh blood from young donors – in the hopes that the procedure will help conquer ageing by rejuvenating the body’s organs. The company

It’s one of the biggest questions in the Solar System: was there ever life on Mars? And, if yes, will we ever find evidence for it? We still don’t have the answers, but new research has revealed a promising place to look for clues. Instead of scouring the dusty plains and mountains, maybe we should

He had rations to last just one week. But somehow an Indonesian teenager who drifted out to sea in a floating wooden shack managed to survive 49 days before being rescued by a passing freighter. Aldi Novel Adilang, from the Indonesian province of North Sulawesi, endured a terrifying ocean voyage when the remote fishing hut

For the first time, scientists have discovered all-female termite colonies, living and flourishing in Japan. While we know of several insect species that easily thrive without any males, this is an exciting new development in our understanding of asexual reproduction. Most species on this planet reproduce sexually, requiring both male and female gametes in order

NASA scientists have combined data on our planet’s rotation with a number of sophisticated models to find that melting ice is a major cause of a strange drift in our planet’s wobbling spin. Yes, our love of fossil fuels hasn’t just given Earth an extra blanket, it’s literally throwing the entire globe off balance. The

On a primitive piece of space rock more than 100 million miles (160 million kilometres) from Earth, two tiny robotic explorers took their first cautious “hops” this weekend – the first movements made by any human-made spacecraft across the surface of an asteroid. The twin rovers were deposited Friday atop the half-mile-wide asteroid Ryugu by

One of the world’s most renowned mathematicians showed how he solved the 160-year-old Riemann hypothesis at a lecture on Monday – and he will be awarded US$1 million if his solution is confirmed. Sir Michael Atiyah, who has won the two biggest prizes in mathematics – the Fields Medal and Abel Prize – took the

Galileo Galilei had one of the brightest scientific minds we’ve ever seen. Amongst his many achievements was helping to finally cement the idea that Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the other way around – but a newly discovered letter reveals how he toned down his views to avoid angering the church. The note was

Over the last 10 years, it’s estimated there has been a 360 percent rise in veganism in Britain – around 542,000 people have ‘gone vegan’. As a nation of animal lovers, with around 44 percent of homes owning a pet – and somewhere in the region of 8.5 million dogs in the UK – it’s

If you were trying to convince another human that you yourself are also human, what would you say? Probably something about emotions, right? That might work – but other humans are more likely to believe your humanity if you talk about bodily functions. Specifically, the word ‘poop’. At least, that’s the finding from a study

It’s called the Meghalayan: an epic stretch of time that spans from around 4,200 years ago right up until the time you finished reading this sentence. Officially ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy in July, this newly recognised period is now considered a distinct age in the geologic time scale – but ever since

Praying mantises catch and eat a lot of different animals. All kinds of insects, lizards, and even frogs, snakes, or small birds if it comes to it. But scientists didn’t think fish were on the menu – until now that is. Researchers have discovered a praying mantis in India repeatedly enjoying a meal of guppies

A woman in Virginia found a bizarre surprise in her flower bed last week: a copperhead snake with not one, but two heads on a single body. According to experts, it’s an incredibly rare find. The venomous viper (Agkistrodon contortrix) was discovered on Sunday 16 September, and has been removed to the care of an

Hydrogen fuel cells are a greener way to power vehicles. But they have also been cost-prohibitive. Now that’s starting to change – last week, German passengers boarded the world’s first hydrogen-powered trains. “Sure, buying a hydrogen train is somewhat more expensive than a diesel train,” said Stefan Schrank, a project manager at locomotive company Alstom,

Even as the water from Hurricane Florence and the flooding that followed finally began to recede, it left behind a poignant – and pungent – reminder of the powerful storm that overwhelmed the Carolinas and turned roads to rivers. Thousands of dead and dying fish littered Interstate 40 in North Carolina over the weekend, stranded

Elon Musk has provided several new, rare, and telling glimpses into how his rocket company, SpaceX, is building a spacecraft to reach Mars. On September 17, Musk announced that SpaceX would fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon on the company’s Big Falcon Rocket or BFR. During that event, Musk showed off new renderings of the launch system,